"Next of Kin" and Harvard Museum of Natural History Studies

Speaking as an artist, I'm not sure if drawing stuffed animals can teach me anything meaningful anymore.

Let's back up.  I was back in Boston for a week last month and decided I might as well enjoy the local attractions.  I hadn't been to Harvard to draw in ages and I'd heard they had a new exhibit that was a must-see, so I headed over there.

That new exhibit, man.  It's called Next of Kin.  The HMNH is so *old* that many of its skeletal and taxidermy specimens are from severely endangered or even extinct animals.  Artist Christina Seely, working alongside The Canary Project, an organization of ecologically-minded scientist/artists, created an art installation using many of these specimens.  Combining sculpture, photography, and music (including the calls of extinct animals), it's a stunning and incredibly moving marriage of science and art.  It is indeed, to borrow a phrase, not to be missed.  You've got until June to catch it. 

Oh yeah, and a far, far more accurate title for it would be "You Will Need A Strong Drink And A Good Long Stare At The Wall After This One."

It managed to haunt my entire visit.

I felt *bad* walking among the taxidermy in a way that's hard to put into words.  I drew a lot, as you can see, but I felt bad about it.  Even weirdly complacent - these were, after all, living animals that had been killed and stuffed in "lifelike" poses just so people like me could come and study their propped-up pelts.  So I really don't know if dead animals have anything left to teach me.

Anyway, on that cheerful note, art!







I got home with a desperate need to see *living* animals.  And so a few days later...

"In the Year 252525..." Let's Read _Man After Man_!

Note: Many thanks to Sivatherium for his extensive archive of speculative biology books on his lovely Neocene website, because the book has been long out of print and asking prices on Amazon are outrageous.  His is the version of Man After Man I read for this review and do please read along, as I'm not going to post any illustrations.

Ah, Dougal Dixon.  We've already explored his two signature books on speculative animals, and we've touched on some of his more obscure and incredibly strange science fiction biology works as well.

And I swore up and down that I'd never do a post about his Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future.

This is all due to my first memory of sitting down and reading the book.  I was young, innocent.  I'd just devoured both After Man and The New Dinosaurs and I was ready for more.  I found a copy of Man After Man, bought it, brought it home, and sat down to read it.  And I was deeply, profoundly shaken to my core.  It had upset me that badly.  It upset me so badly, and remember this is preteen-logic at work here, I threw the accursed book into the recycling bin in the basement because I just could not stand having it in the house.  So there's my glowing review of Dougal Dixon's Man After Man from some time shortly after it was first published in 1990. 

Well, I am older now.  I've read quite a lot of pessimistic science fiction and it doesn't shock me the way it did back then, so I am breaking that promise today!  It's time!  Get a strong drink and a comfortable seat!  Do as I did and load up Sivatherium's archived edition of the book.  Tune your radio to the very easiest easy-listening station you can find.  (If the bioparanoia apocalypse has a soundtrack, it'd be even mellower versions of James Taylor and Amy Grant songs and the "St. Elmo's Fire" theme*.)  Notify your next of kin, because all your most horrifying bad dreams are about to be lovingly painted in vivid, fleshy, body horror-y,

-y detail by Philip Hood.  (Great day in the morning, this is a particularly epic Dixony Rolls Of Fat waking nightmare.  You know the kind of sick feeling you get when you stumble upon somebody's uncomfortably specific fetish art?  Yeah... 😨)

Humans are bastards!  Everything is horrifying!  God is dead and we genetically engineered Him away!  Transhumanist body modification is either going to kill us all or make us into hideous mutants living in our own special Hell!  Let's read Man After Man!

Bit of a side-note first.  Tetrapod Zoology has written about Dougal Dixon's works extensively and I'd be remiss if I didn't direct you to this wonderful interview with Dixon.  Man After Man has always had an uncomfortable place among Dixon's books, and this interview gives some hints as to why that might be: he really didn't want to make this book at all.  Add to that the controversy of whether the creatures in the book were... *inspired*, let's say... by these Wayne Barlowe sketches and you've got yourself a book that could scream "I am a thing that should not be" as loud as the grotesque people who inhabit it's pages.

The book begins with an introduction by Brian Aldiss.  It already sets a notably more dour tone than Desmond Morris' introductions to both After Man and New Dinosaurs.  He talks about previous science fiction books that explored the possible futures of humanity, most notably The Time Machine, in which H. G. Wells depicted two different future species descended from humans.  He supposes that Wells and his influences "would like this book, and be horrified by it: for we have, after all, traveled a long way since their day, and supped on horrors beyond their resources.  We have lived through an age... when we have almost daily expected the world to be terminated."

Surely, we are in for fun times for all with this here book.

Dixon gives us a very quick review of how the process of evolution works and then emphasizes that we humans, with our penchant for unnatural selection and for modifying the environment to suit us rather than vice-versa, have effectively "broken" it.  So then, how are humans going to change into the freakish mutants promised on the front cover?  Simple: Genetic Engineering!  This, indeed, may be one of the earliest instances of "genetic engineering is a new technology that is poorly understood and incredibly powerful and can probably do anything and is almost certainly going to end the world as we know it" in popular science fiction.  That's something at least.

Next up is probably my favorite part of the book: eight million years of human history given in a series of short stories.  This short-story format continues throughout the book, and that means where this book could have easily been a sort of freak show, instead it has an uncomfortable intimacy.  In Dixon's previous books, the text was more like a dry field guide, but here we are invited into the lives of individuals.  It's a subtle but particularly nasty way to remind us that no matter how strange the creatures in the book are, all of them, every single one, is a human.

The parade of body horror begins 200 years in the future and ends -quite abruptly- five million years later.  Modern humans as we know ourselves survive for about another thousand years on Earth until the shifting of the magnetic poles wipes us out for good; we're simply too reliant on technology to survive that.   Long before that, those who could afford to and who were deemed worthy went off to outer space to escape the ravaged Earth, in ships built, in part, by humans who'd undergone massive genetic engineering and body modification.  Of these, Cralym the Vacuumorph is the most extreme and perhaps the most upsetting.  She is a creature born to die, after serving her purpose of building the ships that will send her normal human parents to a new home. There is a question as to why people of the future would create such an extremely mutated human instead of, say, a machine, but this book has biotechnology as it's science fiction trope of choice and it's sticking with it.  Anyway, Cralym's story sets the tone for the wild ride we're about to head on.

And all told, this is some darn good "Far out, man"-style science fiction.  We meet the Mechanical Hiteks, cyborgs who are basically a brain in a box, and who are horribly vulnerable outside of their robotic vehicles.  The Earth is starting to recover by their time, and so the Hiteks create new species of humans to take the place of the large animals that roamed the wilderness.  The Hiteks themselves are succeeded by Tics, who live in what are essentially meat-mechsuits.  Yup, fleshy bio-engineered meat-mechsuits with those good old Dixonian rolls of fat as far as the eye can see.  They and the few remaining normal humans have the decency to die out, as previously mentioned, leaving the engineered new human species to their own agendas.

And oh we have such sights to show you.  The Memory People are blessed and cursed with a "racial memory" that allows them to find rich sources of food but also essentially leaves them with "Koyaanisqatsi" running through their minds at all times; they voluntarily let themselves go extinct, lest they be tempted to become industrial humans again.  Dixon's love of eusocial animals manifests in the Hivers, descended from humans modified to live on grasslands, they live in massive castles with a perpetually pregnant Queen (nope), and have a symbiotic relationship with a Seeker (nope), who starts off as a fairly normal humanoid with the psychic ability to find resources in harsh environments (what) and eventually evolves into a big-headed, limbless baby-thing the Hivers must carry around (nope).  And there are the Tundra-people and Forest-people made kind-of-famous by this:

The Forest people are the most similar to the ancestors of all humans, which means that they are both the most adaptable and the most prone to being right little bastards.  Once the technologically advanced humans are gone, leaving nature to take its course, they and the Tundra People diversify into the most bizarre mutants.  One group of the Tundra and Forest people eventually become telepathic symbionts, all because a Forest person, driven mad by cold, tried to hunt a Tundra person like this and ended up sat upon -but not crushed- by their would-be prey.  Sure.  Another group of Tundra and Forest people became host and parasite, the Tundra person becoming a walking mountain of flesh to carry and feed nasty little vampire guys.  At the four-million year mark things really get outright bonkers, with the Tundra people becoming "Sloth Men" who are preyed upon by Spiketooth descendants of the Forest people, who also give rise to specialized fish eaters (a dead ringer for the piscaverous ape in After Man) and, because this is a Dougal Dixon book, ant-eaters.  This is all after Forest people have been shown to make and use tools, so I don't even know.

It's in the Year 5,000,000 and a half where everything goes to hell.  This is probably the most infamous chapter of the book, where aliens invade Earth, enslave the mutants, mutate them even more horrifically into thoughtless biological weapons and living meat stores, and strip the land of all it's resources before blasting off again, leaving everything dead.

Did you guess who those aliens were?  They were the distant descendants of the humans who left Earth millions of years ago!  Woah!  It really makes you think, doesn't it?

Fortunately, all is not lost, as there are people who survive the Apocalypse.  Yes, the Aquatics!  For my money, these mans after mans are the most... haunting. It's the eyes.  And also the "mermaid tail" and the fact that we never really get an explanation of how it works, anatomically speaking.  And the most of them, really.  Anyway, these... merfolk... technically... they survive by camping out by the deep sea vents.  It's implied that once the world recovers enough, these people will repopulate the planet, and it will be full of life again.  So that's nice.  I guess.

Thank you all so much for joining me on this journey through the world of Man After Man.  I am going to have a lot of wine and a good long stare into space.

* - Sweet Christmas, somebody make a mostly straight remake of "St. Elmo's Fire" -- except all the characters are genetically modified affronts to nature.  Dammit, I want to watch this hypothetical movie right now!  I am so angry at myself for making myself want it so much!

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Art of the Day!


I am full of regrets...

"Fraggle Rock" Month: Season 4, Episode 18 - "The River of Life"

Throughout "Fraggle Rock", humans have almost invariably been referred to by the Fraggles as "Silly Creatures".  It's one of the most overlooked ingenious aspects of the whole series.

When we humans are the alien "other" to nonhuman point-of-view characters, you are almost guaranteed to see the rusty old "Humans Are Bastards" trope.  The writers of "Fraggle Rock" are smart enough to not avoid it completely.  But they put an unexpected fairer spin on it: humans aren't evil and we're certainly not intentionally mean, but we do some awfully confusing things sometimes.  And sometimes we do things that would look downright stupid from the outside.  We are, in a word, silly.

The Silly Creature we've been most concerned with in this series is... well, here's where things are going to get complicated, because where Canada and the United States had Doc, played by the irreplaceable Gerry Parkes, other markets around the world had a different human lead.  The fascinating thing here is that nearly all versions of "Fraggle Rock" had an older gentleman as their equivalent character.  You'd think our human emissary into the world of Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs would be a child for maximum audience-appeal points, and a less interesting series probably would have done that (there's a quick moment in "Uncle Matt's Discovery" where a little girl finds a Fraggle Hole that gives us a glimpse of that less interesting series).  But there's "Fraggle Rock" for you, subverting expectations at every opportunity.

In any case, this is one of the very few episodes where the human world directly intrudes on Fraggle Rock.  And your heart sinks at the revelation in the prologue that not only have humans found the "empty limestone caves" surrounding Doc's workshop and the Captain's Inn, it turns out that a few humans have already found an unsavory use for them: as a potential "safe" dumping ground for industrial waste.

I grew up in the early 90's.  I've seen a lot of programs try to do a "save the environment" episode.  An awful lot of them fail because they end up in way over their head; usually the issue ends up either too simplified or too overbearing.  Jim Henson would go to this well quite a few times, and he'd usually do a better job than most.  But I think this is his most powerful take on the issue, one of the best attempt at such an episode ever made by anyone really, and here's why:  At this point in the series, we've spent so much more time in the Rock than in the human world that it feels more like home than the human world does.  We've spent three and a half seasons with the Fraggles; that's basically like going to college with somebody.  So learning that somebody intends to dump poisonous industrial byproducts into the caverns of Fraggle Rock does not strike us viewers as a sad -- but faraway! :D -- tragedy (to borrow a phrase from another series).  No, it is nothing less than an incredible violation of our own home and beloved friends.  It's unthinkable.

And it gets worse.  Because here's the other remarkable aspect of his episode: who is this human who is threatening our home and our friends?  Who is this person who could, just by agreeing to the dumping, doom the Fraggles to extinction and the entire Fraggle Rock ecosystem to complete annihilation without even realizing it?  It isn't some dedicated "eco-villain" a la "Captain Planet" who evidently just thrives on hurting living things for the hell of it.  It's not a random character who is going to show up for only this episode, naively causes harm, learns to not do that, and promises never to pollute again and therefore gets to be an honorary Planeteer (yeah, this isn't the most original observation, but "Captain Planet" was not very good).  And it's not even a big, faceless scary corporation.  No, this episode doesn't go the easy route.  The person who could inadvertently kill all these wonderful characters we've grown to love over the years is Doc.  Yes, dear old kindly Doc, the nicest human character of all.  Doc who we know and love.  Doc, who we know would never in a million years do anything that would hurt another living thng, and certainly wouldn't even think of harming Fraggle Rock if he knew about it.  Holy sh*t, this episode; is it trying to kill me over here?  I need a beer and a good long stare at the wall, guys.

And so help me, it gets WORSE!  Because Boober, the only resident of the Rock who hasn't been poisoned, has tracked the source of the pollution to Outer Space.  And in a scene that is less "sad" and more "brace yourselves, audience, cause now we are just going to tear out your guts and stomp all over them", he kneels down at the entrance to Doc's workshop and pleads with the Silly Creatures to stop hurting his friends.  The thing is, he doesn't know that Doc and Sprocket have stepped out for a while, and the workshop is totally empty... except for us Silly Creatures in the audience... Oh, God...

The episode ends with the residents of Fraggle Rock well again, singing and merrymaking as usual thanks to Doc calling off the dumping project... and with Doc seriously wondering for the first time at those mysterious caverns under his home, thanks to the stack of postcards addressed to one Gobo Fraggle that Boober had left at the entrance to the tunnel to Outer Space. The more I think about it, the more I think this may be the single most profound episode of the entire series.

"Fraggle Rock" Month - Season 4, Episode 1: "Sprocket's Big Adventure"

(Note: This is the twenty-third episode included on my [relatively] old season three DVDs, but I have recently learned that it was aired and produced as the first episode of season four.  We'll talk about the scheduling weirdness of HBO next week.)

So here we are in the last (or second-to-last depending on what part of the world you were in -- but again, that's something we'll talk about next week) season of "Fraggle Rock" and at this point the Fraggle world, the Doozer world, and the Gorg world have all interacted with one-another somehow.  And the Human world, our world, has interacted just a little bit with the Fraggle world.

There's the obvious fact that humans have met Uncle Traveling Matt on his adventures in "Outer Space".  And now it is tangent time, cause I can't believe I haven't talked about this yet.  "Outer Space" is the Fraggles' term for our world, and I never truly realized the brilliance of that until I considered this show as an adult.  This gives "Fraggle Rock" all the hallmarks of a xenofiction series.  We're seeing the whole world through the eyes of the Fraggles, so the unknown alien creatures living in an unknown alien world, we realize with a little shudder, are us.

Sprocket, Doc's loyal dog, is a truly horrifying alien creature to the Fraggles.  Earlier in the series, he and Gobo came to a kind of understanding after Gobo helped Sprocket when he was trapped in the tunnels leading from the workshop to Fraggle Rock.  Now, they're friends, which comes in handy when Sprocket becomes lost in the tunnels of the Rock in this episode.

Here's the crazy thing about this episode, and the reason why I love it.  At this point in the series, we are more familiar with the worlds of Fraggle Rock than we are with the human world.  And just now, we're getting to see this world from the point of view of an outsider.  I'd like to point out that most series set in a fantastical imagined world do this in the very first episode/book/whatever.  Meanwhile, "Fraggle Rock" dropped us right into the fantasy world from the start with almost no hand-holding.  It doesn't do the obligatory episode where a newly arrived character is given a lengthy tour and has all the details of how the place works explained to him until the first episode of the final season.  You guys...

Anyway, Sprocket makes his way into Fraggle Rock and, in yet another nice subversion, meets with Cotterpin and her Doozer crew before any of the Fraggles.  And Cotterpin recognizes how lost this poor beast is and shows him the way to his home -- which, she assumes, is the Gorg's garden.  So Sprocket meets Junior Gorg and Marjory the Trash Heap.  The latter turns out to be fluent in canine and helps poor Sprocket find Gobo and the way back to Doc's workshop

And so we have the table set for the major crossovers between the worlds of the final season.  That does it for the third season set.  Next week, we head into the last season of "Fraggle Rock, which includes several episodes I have never seen before.  I'm just warning you, this could get emotional...

Various and Sundry Things Seen at MOS

And now, exactly what I just said. Weird and or interesting things I saw during this latest of many visits to Boston Museum of Science.



Here's another look at the Nyctosaurus sculpture...



And a close-up of her mate.



"Listen, no matter how sick and tired YOU are hearing about 2012, I'm even MORE sick of it."



"There's one, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another... PAPA! It's US!!!"



If I were a little kid, I'd be all over these Ankylosaur-inspired backpacks.



But where are their wings? (Heh.)



Funny story about Horseshoe Crabs I don't think I've shared yet.

I was very young and my class was on a field trip to a literal field (a local salt marsh) to explore nature during the autumn. We had some kind of scavenger hunt going on and I had to find a stick. So I see this lovely pointy stick stuck in the marshy ground and excitedly yanked it out of it's place without thinking to show my class -- who all looked at the thing in my little girl hand with varying expressions of abject horror.

You see that Giger-esque monstrosity in this case? Yeah. I'd pulled a gigantic live Horseshoe Crab out of it's hibernating spot. Life has never been the same since.



There's a very nice new (to me) exhibit about the history of the Museum of Science and it's predecessors with lots and lots of vintage exhibits on display.



9/1/14 Never Forget! (I don't think this is THE Martha, but still...)



And while we're on the subject of human bastardry and childhood trauma, see this eagle? Funny - well, actually the exact opposite of funny - story about this eagle.

He (I'm guessing) was put on display as part of a really neat exhibit from my childhood with the irresistible name, "What's In Our Attic"? My younger self was delighted to see all the cool stuff the Museum had accumulated over it's history (most of it is now on permanent display as part of Natural Mysteries).

To make a long story short, this is where young Trish learned that J.J. Audubon shot and stuffed many birds to use as models for his famous paintings. I very definitely remember being utterly crushed and suddenly not knowing anything about anything anymore.



Speaking of childhood trauma, note how misleading this advertisement is if you were, say, six. Hell, for all I knew, they'd found a real life Sally Impossible!



It's incredibly cool to see the original report of the Nahant Bay Sea Serpent though.



And a selection of Blaschka Glass sea creatures! Beautiful, delicate little works of art, it's always a privilege to see them.



And finally, drawings! Here's my study of Audubon's eagle.



Various other animal specimens.



And of course my traditional study of Cliff!

The Blue Hills Trailside Museum

One of the best-loved wildlife sanctuaries run by the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the Blue Hills Trailside Museum is so-named because it essentially serves as an interpretive center for a series of extensive paths that lead up into the Blue Hills. It had been a very, very, VERY long time since the last time I visited, so when my lovely aunt asked if I wanted to join her on a hike, I jumped at the chance.



The Trailside Museum is somewhat similar to the Maine Wildlife Park, which I have sung the praises of quite a bit on this Blog previously. It's not as extensive or big, and there is a smaller variety of wildlife on display. Of course, since all the live animals are unable to live in the wild on their own, this is definitely a good thing. Let's take a look at the star exhibit:



OK, folks, take a good look. This is the one snake in New England you might be justified in freaking out over. Just this one.

Actually, no. No, forget that. See, it turns out that the Timber Rattlesnake has more reason to fear us because it is in the same unenviable and almost surreal predicament that many sharks and large land carnivores have found themselves in. Humans are terrified of them even though they try hard to avoid us, and just because they've injured maybe a few dozen of us, we have killed MILLIONS of them. Or, in the Timber Rattler's case, ALL of them, since they are essentially extinct in Massachusetts, very definitely extinct in Maine, and their numbers elsewhere in the northeast don't inspire confidence.

Do I need to say it? Man, speaking of Tropes, f*** this Trope. I need a drink.



I also need to make a donation! I don't know who built this or even what it is, but I remember it from when I last came here as a child. I'm all for periodically updating museums, but it's nice to see some things stay the same.



So, let's hit the Red Dot Trail! My father, sister, and I climbed this trail many many times and I wonder if anything has changed?



I got old. That's what changed. Ah, well, it's worth the pain in my knees to see views like these. So, have some shots of nature showing off. All the pictures in this post are hosted at my Flickr, so click to go to the big versions.







If nothing else, we're learning that the landscape of eastern Massachusetts is mostly big chunks of granite held together by trees.

"That's very nice, Trish, but where's the fall foliage?"

Ah, well, there is an Observatory at the top of Blue Hill that nearly all the trails lead to. The building is obviously quite old, and was clearly built to hold only five people at once comfortably. That means it gets very claustrophobic very quickly, since everyone who climbs the trails ends up in the top of the somewhat skinny tower (sometimes with very small children and babies, sometimes with dogs. Yeah.) Fortunately, I was able to snap these before I had to get out:



And the one picture everyone takes:



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Sketch of the Day!

Live studies of the Museum's residents:

In Which Trish Tries to Reassess "Cars" and Wonders if She Even Wants a Fourth "Jurassic Park"

I have been seeing an unusual sentiment lately that you've probably also already seen around the Internet wherever animation is discussed: "This might be the first year I ever voluntarily skipped a PIXAR film." "I love PIXAR, but I can't see myself paying to watch this." "I'll go, but once the short and the 'Brave' trailer are over, I'm out." "Why the hell are we not getting an 'Incredibles' sequel instead of this?" The film in question, this summer's annual PIXAR entry, is "Cars 2".

Admittedly, "Cars 2" has quite a lot going against it. It's explicitly been made as a moneymaker, even though PIXAR *really* doesn't need one. And also, well, it's a continuation of "Cars".

It's fairly common knowledge among animation fans that "Cars" is widely considered the "least best" PIXAR film. Fans have a hard time finding good things to say about it for a number of reasons I'll get to. It had been a while since I watched it, so I decided to revisit it and try to give it a fair reassessment. Maybe the movie was better than most people thought?

I fell asleep halfway through.

If you've read the Chronological Disney Animated Canon from a few years back, you know that (a) I don't sleep through animated films under normal circumstances and (b) when I do, it generally means that they are pretty bad ("Home on the Range" is a notable example). But being the nice person I am, I watched the rest the next morning.

I still don't like "Cars". But having watched the movie again, I have a better understanding of why I and most other PIXAR fans don't like "Cars":

First off, it's very definitely a film for little kids. PIXAR has made it's name by making movies for everyone. Moms and dads, boys and girls, dogs and cats, adults and children - every other PIXAR film appeals not just to the whole family but to that coveted demographic: everyone. But "Cars" is aimed squarely at the Matchbox/Tonka/Micro Machines set. There were scenes in the film where I couldn't help but think, "This is kind of stupid, but I'm sure a four-year-old would find it funny."

That said, there are also weird little moments that only an adult fully versed in car culture would appreciate. Racing stars have vocal cameos. There's an underlying nostalgia for old-fashioned cross-country road trips. Every vehicle is exhaustively researched to the point where they make the right sounds. For me, whose heart belongs to her fellow organic life forms and who does not get car culture at all, it was like peering into a window on an alternate universe, where I didn't understand the language or anything. (Though it is unspeakably reassuring to know that even when PIXAR swings and misses, they're still going to research their asses off. Therefore, I am foaming at the mouth with anticipation for the Celtic mythology-based "Brave".)
"Cars" was bookended by "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" on one end and "Ratatouille" and "WALL-E" on the other in the PIXAR chronology. These titles, and the fact that almost everyone has a hard time with the "but 'Cars' was made for children, chill out" argument, shows you what kind of reputation the studio had at the time. And in comparison to these films, "Cars" can't help but feel like an also-ran.

But the one thing that really bugged me during the film is also the one thing that gets brought up again and again as I was reading other people's reviews: The world of "Cars" is not very well constructed. As in, it makes no damn sense, and the more you're forced to think about it, the further you're sucked out of the story.

The characters in "Cars" are talking cars, and as I said, it appears as though most of the research and development for the film went into making them as realistic as possible. It's too bad, then, that almost no thought went into issues like, if they're cars, how -and why- did they build the houses? No, even better, how did they build the tire lugnut screwdriver thing since nothing in this world appears to have appendages with fine motor control? If everything is a car/plane/whatever, even the insects, why is the Dinoco logo still a tyrannosaur? Why is the Ferrari logo still a horse? Where did the fuel come from anyway? What in the world is even in "organic fuel"? Why are there military vehicles? Was there a car war? If (and granted this is from the "Cars 2" trailers but it's worth mentioning here) the Popemobile is indeed Catholic, what in the world kind of religion do these cars have? What would the Order of Mass in a car church look like? Why are they growing lettuce?

It's not just that this is the only PIXAR film completely lacking in the human element. It's worse because everything seems built by and for humans who are never seen, none of this is ever acknowledged, and the viewer's mind can't help but jump to some weird conclusions (my favorites being that this is a cheery distant sequel to "Maximum Overdrive" or a pro-machine propaganda film from the world of the Matrix). It reminded me more of something out of one of the not-good Dreamworks movies really. In "Shark Tale" (aka, the one where Will Smith is a fish and he quotes other movies and it is allegedly hilarious), the world was populated by fish and yet their city looked exactly like New York and they had a car wash and other human things a fish would have no need for. Say what you will about the movie I reviewed earlier this week, but at least "Legend of the Guardians" put some thought into what kind of castle owls would live in and what their tools and armor would have to look like.

So unless the reviews are spectacular, I doubt I'll be rushing to see "Cars 2". Speaking of sequels, last week, /Film reported that "Jurassic Park 4" just flat out refuses to die. The discussion under this report became quite lively and I had to join in. I apologize, but I'm going to be That Person on the Internet and repost some of my thoughts about the possibility of a fourth "Jurassic Park" movie.

The big one is, "Why?"

Could you even make a "Jurassic Park" movie in the 2010s? We've learned (and here I am going to use a very scientific term) a metric sh_t-ton more about the signature dinosaurs in "JP" since even the third movie, and at this point things like naked coelurosaurs would look stupid. Furthermore, you can't really do anything with the reoccurring human characters, nor can you really introduce new ones, without it feeling really forced. (And anyway, who cares about the humans in a "Jurassic Park" movie? :)

So you would either have to do a massive retcon, or come up with an excuse as to why the velociraptors don't look like velociraptors, or go for broke and do something totally insane like the anthropomorphic dinosaur soldier hero squad idea that was floating around a while back.

Or -and call me crazy- maybe come up with a totally new and different prehistoric animal franchise?

About the only thing that might make sense at this point would be a prequel. In the novels, there's a lot of implied (and not) backstory which could fuel a good "JP" prequel. All from memory, since it's been a while: A better explanation of the lysine contingency. The genetic engineers being asked to make the real live goddamn non-avian dinosaurs look and act more like what people "expect" (in the late 80's remember). Alan Grant being called in the middle of the night with the question "seriously, what would a baby Miasaura eat?" since the Park scientists have no zookeepers among them and have *no* experience with animals. Struggles with adapting the animals to modern diseases and parasites. And of course they could show exactly how the Park scientists learned how unruly the pterosaurs and maniraptors are...

And this was my favorite idea until a poster named Jonas came up with:

"They should set it in a distant future when humanity is extinct and the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park have populated the Earth and evolved to talk and make an amusement park where they can interact with real flesh and blood HUMANS recreated from genetic information preserved in fossilized rolled up gym socks: HOLOCENE PARK!"

Oh sweet Raptor Jesus, I need this movie yesterday (although the title really ought to be "Neogene Park", heh). The whole thing writes itself and I shall repeat my off-the-cuff dialogue for prosperity:

Dinosauroid!Alan Grant - "Well, perhaps humans are more closely related to our modern Rabbucks than to ancient reptiles. Look at the mammary glands, just like a Rabbuck's! Perhaps they even had hair like a Rabbuck!"

Dinosauroid!Annoying Child - "THAT doesn't look very scary! More like a fifteen pygostyle tall PARASHREW!!!"

Dinosauroid!Alan Grant - "A Parashrew. Well, imagine you're in the late Holocene. You see this fifteen pygostyle tall parashrew walking towards you, rather ungainly since it's hind legs are so absurdly long and it's skull is so monstrously large. But suddenly, you are attacked! *WSSHT!!!* By the other six billion humans that you didn't even know were there. And when they kill you, they kill with this: a gun. Point is, you will be stripped bare, have your bones and organs torn out, be cut into little pieces, and set on fire when they start to EAT you. So next time, show a little respect, hm?"

Dinosauroid!Annoying Child - 😨

(Later...)

Dinosauroid!Ellie Satler - "Gosh, Alan, if you wanted to scare the kid you could have just jumped up and screamed while flashing your talons at him."

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Sketch of the Day!



Ducks and Chickadees...

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Other Person's Art of the Day!

I'm going to link to this piece by concept artist Jake Parker. It's his take on Lightning McQueen and, honestly, it is glorious because it pretty much sums up my thoughts and feelings RE: "Cars".

Inside Lightning McQueen

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Ridiculously Important Addendum!

Guess who almost forgot to remind everyone that "Futurama" returns tonight at ten?

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Even MORE Ridiculously Important Addendum!

So... this post prompted a rebuttal from Scott at the Coherent Lighthouse. You should read it. (If only because it is so far the very first rebuttal I've prompted from *anything* I've written on this blog. Yeah...)

I feel a little silly that I could potentially get into an argument on the Internet over "Cars" of all things. Also, more importantly, I guarantee my response to Scott's post was exactly what he was probably doing while reading mine: Nodding politely while drumming his nails and thinking, "Yeah, but..." So, I am going to respectfully agree to disagree here.

(Even though I really really REALLY want to re-emphasize that the "it's just a kid's movie, chill out" argument is hard to swallow since I and practically every animation fan in the world expect so much more from PIXAR and... OK, Trish just breathe...)

Let's Continue Reading _The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of DINOSAURS and Prehistoric Animals_!

As stated in part one (hit "Older Post"), The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of DINOSAURS and Prehistoric Animals set out to illustrate every fossil vertebrate yet known circa the late '80s. What it doesn't do is dedicate much text to the animals included. And some animals need more love.

Take the Pareiasaurs seen above. No, they aren't dinosaurs. They're a group of Permian Anapsids, and as such their only famous relatives are turtles and tortoises. (This may give some of you non-nature-geeks a headache but turtles, as it turns out, might not be closely related to any other modern reptiles. Should be noted that Class Reptilia might as well be retitled, "Animals Charles Linneus Did Not Like".) The Encyclopedia gives no information about these animals other than basically, "They were big herbivores with four legs and they had big bumps on their heads." Yeah. Could never have guessed that.



We've got a very wide variety of animals to see today so let's stay in Anapsida for now. This is a Mesosaur, and I really like him. Look how cute he is. I have a soft spot for water animals and Meso here is stated to be the first land animal who "returned to the sea". In fact, I think Mesosaurus has the most text of any animal we've looked at in this book! Nothing particularly interesting; he was long-bodied but small (about three feet long) and probably lived like an otter.



From cute aquatic reptiles, I take you now to weird fish. These are two Elasmobranch fish, and fellow frequent "Science... Sort Of" listeners probably already know that this is the big clade to which sharks and rays belong. Scapanorhynchus is a shark from the Cretaceous period and probably lived like modern Goblin Sharks. Stethacnthus is a much, much older fish from the Devonian, and that thing on his fin was some kind of threat display.

The book demonstrates very vividly that the shark is the grand jury prize winner in the grand game of evolution. Single genres of shark (like the famous Hybodus, which looks rather like a bigger Spiny Dogfish) last for more geological periods than whole orders of four-legged animals do!



Ischyodus is a member of the other group of cartilaginous fish, the Chimaeras. Just have to point out one thing: this fish has some creepy lips.



Our last fish is from the extinct fish group, the Placoderms, or "Armorsharks" thanks to their armored skin and the fact that their most famous member, Dunkleosteus, was nightmare fuel on fins. This Placoderm is Gemeuendina, a bottom-dweller remarkably similar to modern rays and flounders, and that FACE!?! (See also...)

And with that, we move on to amphibians. Amphibians are cute, right? Right?



OK, seriously. This is Gerrothorax, and it was a big, flat, gill-retaining amphibian whose relatives either all died out in the Jurassic or gave rise to today's frogs and toads.



Platyhystrix is another member of this clade and it was a contemporary of more famous Synapsid sail-havers like Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus. Unlike those animals, Platyhytrix's sail is apparently a really weird kind of armor. And speaking of weird armor...



Diplocaulus! You may recognize this creature. They were in an episode of "Dink the Little Dinosaur" once. Let us not speak of it again.

I know you're impatient, so let's show a few dinosaurs before next post...

Or not, because it is 1988 and birds is birds. See, this book says so:



Yeah. Like the primates, the birds suffer from an unfortunate change in art styles too:



What you're looking at here is essentially the be-all and end-all of prehistoric avian diversity, circa the 1980's. Something like little Sinosauropteryx would have totally broken everyone's mind back then.





And in case you woke up happy this morning, here's today's reminder that Humans Are Bastards. Which is surely the only reason why the Great Auk and Dodo are included as neither of them are, strictly speaking, prehistoric.

Addendum: And in case you are still having a good time after that, here's a recent article about the Dodo that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about people's attitudes towards animals back then.On to Part Three: 80's Dinosaurs!

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It seems James Gurney was in Boston very recently. He visited Club Passim and The Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. The HMCZ is probably my single favorite place to sketch so It's awesome to see it get Gurney's approval.

Also, this happened.

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Sketch of the Day!